Reviewing Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s Stella Artois Commercial

Directors Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and Roman Coppola (Phoenix’s “Funky Squaredance” video, which is now in MoMA’s permanent collection) collaborated on a new commercial for Stella Artois. The cool cleanness and mid-century modernism are very much Anderson, while the jaunty nonchalance recalls Coppola’s aesthetic. “We wanted to set this brand and this film in a 1960s French film world and there’s a lot of that influence in Wes’s work. Also, Roman is a gadgets fanatic, so it was truly the best combination of talent to direct this commercial,” Gustavo Sousa, an advertising executive who supervised the short, told Advertising Age.

The Stella spot is neither Anderson’s nor Coppola’s first foray into commercial direction, nor is it their best. In 2006, Anderson directed a two-minute-long American Express advertisement that stars Jason Schwartzman, Waris Ahluwalia, and Anderson as themselves. In what appears to be a single shot, a camera follows Anderson and doting crewmates as he walks through his movie set. Tigers, guns, geishas, and Grecian columns all pass by in the background as a deadpan Anderson fields questions and waxes philosophic about movie-making.

Schwartzman also starred in Coppola’s recent introductory video for the New Yorker’s iPad app. Like the Am-Ex spot, this commercial’s strength lies in its strict adherence to linear chronology and narrative: Coppola follows Schwartzman as he moves from bed to breakfast to bath, iPad in tow at all times.

None of the aforementioned ads, it should be noted, are particularly convincing at selling their respective products. Whether this is a mark of success or failure likely depends on who’s asked.